It’s Over Now What?

Caregiving is a labyrinth of unknowns, full of twists and turns, heartaches, and tough decisions n and then, suddenly, it’s over. Your loved one has passed away.

Gail Sheehy, world-renown author of Passages, the best-selling book about the stages of life, offers the following advice for dealing with the end of this journey:

“You have completed the labyrinth of caregiving. Now what? Maybe you’ve forgotten who you were before. You’ve been consumed for so long by caring for someone you love. You have given of yourself and done a beautiful thing. After the first months of mourning, grief will come out of nowhere when you least expect it. Don’t sit around and wait for depression to set in. Pick up your passion n whatever you do where time passes and you don’t even notice n and follow it. It will lead you on a new path. Look at it as an adventure! And God bless you.”

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Sheehy, who became AARP’s Caregiving Ambassador in 2009, has chronicled the stages of caregiving in “The Labyrinth of Caregiving,” which can be found on the Internet at: www.aarp.org/family/caregiving.

Additional resources on life after your caregiving role has ended can be found at: